


There's Gonna be a Party When the Wolf Comes Home

by infiniteandsmall



Series: if their Heaven ain't got a vacancy [3]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Badbrains, Found Family, Gen, Gender Issues, Genderqueer Character, Killjoys family 4eva, Mental Health Issues, Queer Themes, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 12:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3447026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteandsmall/pseuds/infiniteandsmall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Show Pony appears at zir elbow with their shades on and their hair stiff with sand. “Hey there, kid,” they say. Kobra slings an arm around their neck. “Can we put our boots back on?” Kobra never took zir boots off. Show Pony knows what zie means, though.</p><p>“Take a walk, right?”<br/>~<br/>Make it go. Family and coming home and finding a new home. Growing out of your shell, new friends on the airwaves. Part three of an continuing series about an origin story for the Fabulous Killjoys</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's Gonna be a Party When the Wolf Comes Home

**Author's Note:**

> Queerness, badbrains, found family, traumaheads, the usual. Title is from “Up the Wolves” by the Mountain Goats. Concrit/typo/messed up pronoun correcting is always welcome. Contains gender feels, wonky thinking, talk of trauma.If any of that knocks you off center, exercise caution before reading!

The Girl is asleep when they reach Doctor D’s. Napping inthe other room, with their small hands curled up underneath their face when they peek in. Jet Star drove all through the night before, and his eyelashes keep fluttering onto his cheeks. He needs a lot of coffee or a lot of shut-eye. Dr. D had a voice that just as big as it is on radio and a bigger hug. Kobra had known this, but zie still wasn’t prepared. Zir body still felt fragile, like it had been glued back together after hitting the dirt but the glue hadn’t finished drying yet. Zie shrunk behind Party, and Doctor D directed his hug at zir brother, who accepted it with his dumb crooked grin and jittering fingers. Kobra wants to shrink back until zie blends in with one of the movie posters on the wall. Right now the room feels too small and everyone’s laughs feel too big. 

Show Pony appears at zir elbow with their shades on and their hair stiff with sand. “Hey there, kid,” they say. Kobra slings an arm around their neck. “Can we put our boots back on?” Kobra never took zir boots off. Show Pony knows what zie means, though.

“Take a walk, right?”

“Yeah.”

“’Course.”

They follow the highway, walking on the side of the road. It’s late afternoon and the sun is sinking low in the sky. Pony’s pushed their shades up onto the top of their head, and the rims of them flash gold and pink.

Kobra’s quiet people. Believe it or not Show Pony is too, so they walk in silence for a while. The desert is blossoming now that the air’s cooler, all kinds of flowers opening up, lilac and rose. The air smells good, and the mountains in the distance hem them in a comforting manner, like a heavy blanket. Kobra thinks of The Girl and is glad to be back with her. Zie slides the zipper on zir jacket up and down, the rasp of the teeth and the rattle into zir fingertips.

“So I hear there’s a new gang on the block,” Show Pony says with a grin.

“Yeah.”

“Some kid with a fresh-as-fuck haircut, too.”

“G—Party—did it.”

They walk a little more. The sun turns brighter and brighter red, until it’s almost the color of Kobra’s coat.

“I really like it,” Kobra says. “I like having a new name. I like it all.”

Show Pony grins. “Red suits you. I like it too.”

“I still sometimes think—“ Kobra chews on the skin around zir thumb. “I guess, that I’ll. Wake up in the city, and this will all be. Ghosted?”

Show Pony says. “Not real? Like a dream? Or like—“ They mime shooting a gun.

“A dream.”

They stand and look at the mountains. Everything looks very real. The air is clear as lighter fluid today. Kobra can see for miles.

“We better head back before it gets dark,” Show Pony says.

“Sometimes I feel like I do when I first cracked the cage,” Kobra says. “Like everything’s new. I’m still afraid when we go close to the city.”

“Everything is new. We do this shit by inches, right? First you get out, then you get free, then you get you. Who knows what happens next. What a catch, right?” Show Pony says. “But I can tell you this: you’ve gone from backroad to interstate since you first got out, kid. You’re accelerating and no one’s gonna be able to hold you back.”

“Well now I’m pumped as fuck,” Kobra says.

“Yeah, yeah, I know I’m inspiring.” Show Pony strikes a pose and snap their sunglasses back on.

“Inspiring me to like, ruffle your hair or something,” Kobra grumbles.

The Girl is awake when they get back. Their cheeks are red from the heat of a small room packed with people, and from dancing to the music echoing out of Doctor D’s tape player.

“Kobra!” They call, and launch themselves at zir. They are deceptively small, mostly puffy vest and a mishmash of different textures and fabrics. Their hair gets all in Kobra’s mouth and their small hands are ticklish on zir neck. Kobra does not let go.

~

Kobra has gotten used to sleeping huddled together with the other three through cold desert nights, trying to stay warm but content to feel arms and legs and breath around zir. Zie had a heavy blanket and sometimes zie would lie pressed under someone’s side, pressure grounding and pleasant. It is strange to sleep in a bed again. It seems so soft, even though zie remembers that when zie first stayed here after escaping the city the mattresses had felt hard and the pillows had felt flat.

Zie wakes up and walks outside and can see kids running. Ripped skin over their knees, and smiles on their faces. The Girl runs with them. Kobra’s head feels heavy, chill from the ground and heat from above. Something zie loves, a path zie could’ve taken. Would zie feel trapped here, by the vegetable garden that is as green as spraypaint fresh from the can?

Their hair unknots, but their sunburn never fades.

~

Jet likes to cook. Kobra never knew that. Jet also tends to wake up early, but that is familiar. Kobra has woken up to the sounds of Jet fixing something under the hood plenty of times. When Kobra comes back inside, Jet is over the stove. He is very tall and the spatula looks tiny in his large hands. Outside, kids are shouting. People are rustling around in the next room. Someone is playing the radio far off. Kobra thinks zie can hear someone in the shack outside singing along. It is a lot. Zie has gotten used to Ghoul and Party’s chatter, to the roar of air outside a fast car, to the thrum of the engine.

All the sounds make zir hands jitter and feet jiggle, and zie focuses on the radio, picks out the bass and separates the static.

They sit in silence for a while, while Kobra feels zir bones slide around inside zir fingers. The radio station has switched, is broadcasting a wrestling tournament. Kobra was obsessed with wrestling when zie was very small. G’s small illegal radio had broadcasted three stations and twenty-four hour wrestling one was one. Kobra had known all of their names and had reenacted their matches with G in the alley outside their house, where no one would see but the cameras that no one checked because they didn’t live a place that had money to check cameras. They lived in a place where people weren’t supposed to be smart enough to fight and fuck and live.

It would be too early, Kobra thinks, to step into a ring with a stranger. It’s probably a rerun, but Kobra doesn’t recognize it. Zie’s missed a lot of matches.

“D’you think it would be hard to fight someone without a balanced breakfast?” zie deadpans.

“Don’t banter at me, K’Kid,” Jet says, pointing the spatula at zir. “You’re the wrestling expert, you tell me.”

“It would be hard. Them’s the  verdict. Thanks for making me the balanced breakfast so I can go fight someone.”

“You haven’t eaten it yet,” Jet says. “Don’t flex your muscles at me.”

“I used to wanna be a wrestler when I was a little kid. That’s all I thought they did where the radio waves came from. Wrestle and rock. Thought I wouldn’t need to eat.”

“You always need to eat. I’m making eggs.”

“You never told me. What you wanted to be when you were a kid.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Jet tilts his head to the side. His hair is catching the yellow early morning light, like a gigantic dust cloud around his head. “I don’t know. I guess I thought I’d be what my older brother was. I don’t remember what he did. But BL/ind was okay with it. So when I got older I wasn’t.”

Kobra thinks of that, imagines zir brother drawing smiley faces for people on the top floors of buildings for the rest of his life, imagines being thirty and walking around the neighborhood zie had grown up in, thinking about the match between Suicide Clobber and Flash Metal and seeing G’s drawings, so unlike the things he’s drawn for zir, leached of color and gore, staring down at zir, reminding zir that nothing would change. “Party got our radio. He would always tell me. Someday we’ll get out of here. I would’ve waited forever for him.”

Zie doesn’t know how to say, I’m sorry, or how to say, we are all brothers now. Both of those statements feel to bare, too much, with the early morning light delicate and the sound of things sizzling on the stove ringing in zir ears.

But Jet smiles, and stirs something in the pan. “Imagine Party drawing the two of you as pro wrestlers. You can’t deny he did.”

“Hey!” Party peek around the corner, indignant and tousle-haired. “That’s state secrets.”

“You probably wanted to call yourself, like, Vampire BoneCrusher or some shit like that.” Ghoul says, following right on Party’s heels.

“Actual, it was Kicks McGee, lay off,” Party says, tossing his bangs back and cocking a hip. “And I had a fuckin’ awesome cleavage window, just lettin’ you know.”

Ghoul and Party laugh their weird honking goose laughs.

Kobra swings zir feet into the seat Party was just about to sit in. “You should draw yourself like a wrestler again. Indulge Ghoul’s latex thing, right?”

“Get your feet out of my chair and your mind outta the ditches,” Party says, swatting at Kobra’s socked toes and trying to retain a semblance of dignity.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kobra says, sliding zir feet off the seat. It hasn’t quieted down much but having a conversation to focus on helps. Ghoul slides the bike chain bracelet he always wears across the table to zir. Jet had made it for him because Ghoul liked the look of them. Jet had promised to make another one for Kobra when he got his hands on some bike chains, but for now Kobra just borrowed Ghoul’s. It felt nice on zir wrist, heavy and grounding, and it was good to fiddle with too.

Kobra remembers when zie and G had washed up here like alkaline crust on the edges of a dried out lake, sunfried and water-starved, remembers sitting around this same table with sore cheeks and tired wary smiles. Remembers, sitting, later, not well-fed but not hungry, and free for once. Remembers Show Pony, unlike anyone zie had ever met, unlike all the small white rooms zie had not fit inside, who had given zir a binder and taught zir how to use it, who showed zir how to make zir voice drop when zie wanted it to. Who had told zir that zie could run or zie could stay, but that zie would have to make a choice someday or else zie would start feeling like zie’d switched on cage for another one.

Remembers how strange it was to heard music played loud and open, how strange to see people dancing outside and singing with the full force of their lungs. Zir fingers tangle in and out of the bike chain bracelet, the click-click-click comforting.

“Is there enough gas in the tank to take the Trans-Am out for a walk?” Kobra asks.

“Yeah, probably,” Jet says, sampling his cooking.

Party shoot zir a worried look. Kobra kinda wants to talk to him, kinda doesn’t. Maybe after the drive.

“I think I’m gonna go after breakfast?”

“I’ve got a new tape if you want it,” Ghoul offers.

“Yeah. That would be great.”

~

Party always holds the wheel firmly but delicately at the same time, pinkies flickering up, wrists dropping. Jet holds it steady and easy, big fingers wrapping easily around. Ghoul is a constant jittering motion, banging along to the radio beat, hands fluttering and jerking back onto the wheel.

Kobra looks at zir hands, long skinny fingers and short nails. Ghoul is good at making mixtapes. The bass booms in zir ears as zir leaves the diner and the cluster of shacks around it behind. Roll down the windows, let the dust come in.

Zie doesn’t go far before zie finds an abandoned gas station. The letters on the front of the building read HELL, and someone’s stapled a huge exclamation point cut out of sheet metal after the word. Kobra remembers it before the “S” at the start of the word went missing. It had been a lot less beaten up then. The desert takes everything back eventually.

Zie parks and gets out. Kobra and G had hung around here a lot when they’d first gotten out to the zones, when the itch to explore, to know, to get out, had been as constant as sunburn.

Graffiti on the walls, still, lots of it new and lots of it old.

“M+G” a sword stabbing through the curve of the “G” and a crown hanging off the corner of the “M.” Underneath is written “HIT THE GAS” in big blue spraypaint letters. Kobra smiles and goes back to the car to get another can. This one’s red, bright as a detonating bomb or the cherry of a cigarette. “KILL EM ALL,” Kobra writes underneath in careless capitols.

The sun’s high in the sky, burning on Kobra’s skin. The wind’s picking up, whipping dust across the blacktop like ghosts.  The bicycle chain click-clacks and pinches zir skin slightly when zie spins it around zir wrist. Kobra remembers when hanging out here had made zir feel wild and free, driving Show Pony’s motorcycle on zir own for the first time with Poison on the back with his hands wrapped around zir waist, clinging for dear life but still yelling down the interstate. Now—well. Kobra’s grown. And the gas station feels small, and safe, and a little too much like home. Zie gets into the car, starts the engine, listens to the roar. Then zie turns the music up and drives back to Doctor D’s, licking zir lips to taste the salt of the dust.

~

Kobra had forgotten what it felt like to mess around inside a house as the sun set and the rooms grew darker and darker. Ghoul and The Girl are sprawled on the floor, moving action figures over the floor. Party’s lips move, sketching out elaborate stories, but Kobra can’t hear them. Zie has zir noise-canceling headphones on, the ones that had cost zir six double-a batteries, two blank tapes, a can of black spraypaint and zir spare pair of goggles (fuckin’ wicked, with bluish lenses that made the sky look impossibly bright) and sits looking through the window at Doctor D. recording. Show  Pony’s in there as usual, sorting through vinyls and tapes and CDs, signing comments at Doctor D. that made one corner of his mouth twitch in a smile with their feet half on his lap.

Show Pony’s frowning at something Doctor D. is saying. He’s probably warning that the dracs are getting deeper and deeper into zones where they had never showed before, getting less and less merciful. Like there was ever mercy with them.

Jet’s tinkering with something, Ghoul and the Girl are engrossed, the Girl spinning their own story now. Party is looking off into space, lips drawn tight and pensive. Kobra’s got a pack of cigs that the crashqueen zie’d gotten the headphones from had tossed in.

“Hey, Party,” zie says. “Wanna go outside for a minute?”

Party snaps out of it, eyes twitching and hands twisting in his lap. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s.”

It’s a typical desert night, with a sky big enough and starry enough to make you feel like you’re being strangled and a cold edge to the wind.

They sit in the Trans-Am with the doors open and smoke. Kobra takes zir coat off and puts it on backward, with zir knees drawn up to zir stomach underneath the fabric, just like zie used to when they were kids. Party doesn’t, just dangles a foot out the car door and stuffs the other underneath him. Standing guard, still.

The Trans-Am is the last thing they have left of Elena, of the old days. They are still brothers. Forever. It is still them against the world. But they both get lost a little easier in their own heads lately, a little less easily in each others.

There’d been days when you could’ve taken them into separate rooms and their lies would’ve been the same. That would probably still hold true, but they haven’t sat alone like this for a while. Being on the road is tiring, and now that they can rest and catch their breath at Doctor D’s, the cracks are showing. Oh well. The desert is gridded with em, where the endless heat of the sun got too much for the parched earth.

At least Party’s a little less twitchy, jogging his hanging foot back and forth but still other than that. Just like Kobra, twitchy for Party means nerves, too many voices and not enough quiet to sort through things.

“M?” Party says softly.

Kobra nods.

“Are you ok?”

Kobra thinks. It isn’t a question, it’s a statement, an old workaround for their heads run wild with too many words, Party’s all spilling out, too much and incomprehensible, Kobra’s hiding inside the coils of zir brain and the thickness of zir tongue and the tightness of zir throat. The old cartoons, Korse & the Draculoids! That they’d watch as kids, before reruns of Mouekat. Korse saying, “Are you ok!” and then the screen flashing up in big black block letters “OF KORSE!”

Korse had been Gerard’s hero when they were very little. He would draw pictures of his mask (“it would be way pretty than the ugly monkey ones, M!”) They’d reenact laser gun battles, Party adjusting Kobra’s grip on the spoons they used as guns.

Kobra remembers how much trouble Party got in, when he drew the picture of Korse with bright purple lace on his sleeves and a blue overcoat and sharp green eyes and a pink laser gun, when he’d found the big box of old stubby colored crayons tucked away in Elena’s house. They’d never seen the box again, and Gerard had cried and cried the next time he went over and their parents had very firmly handed Elena a box of black, white, and greyscale crayons.

When they’d watch Korse & the Draculoids! after that, Gerard would sit, stubbornly stonefaced, through the crazy antics, and when Korse asked, “Are you ok?” he would yell, defiant, “no!”

Their parents had been worried about that, too, had told Gerard no more cartoons. He hadn’t cared, Kobra knew, but Kobra only understood that Korse was no longer Party’s hero, that Party had been betrayed in a big way, but also that Mousekat was funny and helped zir drift out of zir body.

And so Party didn’t yell no anymore, but they’d look at each other and move their lips in that silent shape, their own last stand. It was before they’d learned to say “fuck you.”

Are you ok?

It means, you look tired. You look sore. I can listen.

Kobra thinks. Finds the words. “It makes stuff. Yknow. Come back.”

Party nods, tilts his head back to get a better view of the sky beyond the dashboard.

“Are you ok?” Kobra says.

There it is, his shoulders gathering up, his lips pressing together.

“It feels like leaving again. Like. Losing Elena again.”

Kobra swings zir feet so they’re knocking against Party’s knees, silent reassurance, and then they sit and think. They are on the same wavelength, sleeping at Elena’s for the night they can’t take going back home for reasons they barely understand, brains so slow they hurt and unsteady on their feet, Elena never mentioning the crackle of the guitars on the radio like their parents would’ve.

Elena’s was where Party hid his precious container of colored markers, and those late nights Kobra would sit cross-legged on the bed in the basement and watch Gerard draw Mousekat with a drawn laser gun in bursts of colors and lines and fractured angles. Kobra had said that the drawings must be like what they had in the zones.

Long days of answering phones at the Center for Kobra and drawing the ever-present grinning logo of BL/ind for Party while dreaming of the desert, the sun the color the heat burning the white dead skin off their skeletons.

He thinks of the night, Party crying so hard Kobra had thought his chest would break apart when Elena handed them the keys to the Trans-Am and hugged them goodbye and told them to drive.

To get out while they still could.

When the dracs finally dropped off their tail, Kobra driving because Party couldn’t see through the tears, the gas pedal powerful under the soles of zir shoes. When the highway unfurled before them, endless, and Kobra had pulled over and dropped out of the driver’s side door gasping, the empty space making zir feel like zir would fall off the edge of the world.

When they’d found the abandoned warehouse, a couple kids in black and white clothes who’d hitched a ride with a couple of starry-eyed crashqueens. They’d ran here and there, passed from group to group, going with the wounded to safe zones as though they’d had their side slit or their leg crushed.

The mess of getting fucked up on whatever they can get their hands on, moonshine and BL/ind pills mixed together to make you see stars. Party had always been the one on a lot of pills, in the city. He’s gotten twitchy, couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Kobra had learned, early on, how to leave zir body. The collar and tag of zir school uniform had always itched so badly, but Kobra knew zie couldn’t remove it. That was punishable. And so zie would leave, float on the ceiling and watch zir small unfamiliar body, curled and hurt from something that couldn’t be bandaged.

And that’s what zie did, crowded into small spaces, when the lights and the bass in clubs was enough to make zir want to slam zir head into walls, when Party collapsed, high off his head, and zie wasn’t much better, they were riding the white highway, like they said. On his way to heaven, but killjoys don’t die, and in the desert, and they woke on days when they shouldn’t have, cheating death and paid back with a splitting headache and a head as fuzzed as it had been back in the city.

Zie remembers when Show Pony picked them out of the wreckage after the dracs attacked and they detoxed in a week. It’s a lot, and it comes back so strong. Zie remembers sitting and smoking with Party on nights when they’d both jittered on withdrawal.

Party puts his head down on Kobra’s thigh, and Kobra tangles zir fingers up in his greasy hair and smooths out the snarls.

“Did you hear that Sparkle Smasher’s up against Kill Thrill tomorrow night?”

“Wait, really!” Party’s voice swoops high like it does when he’s really excited, and he knocks his tiny teeth together in a slidey smile.

“Yeah! I’m pumped as fuck, ok, remember when Kill Thrill totally—“

“Fuckin’ ground Blood Battery Brett into Power Pup? Hell yeah, oh my god, it’s like, yknow,” and Party goes on about stats vs stats and right hooks. He’s smiling, and Kobra’s smiling, and Kobra thinks, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. But they get through it.

And they still will.

-

Kobra drives out to the gas station again the next day. Zie needs to break out of old habits, needs to remember all that zie’s done since zie was here last. Zie is not who zie used to be, zie is a killjoy now. And so zie makes sure zie stands up straight, rocks from zir heels back to the tips of zir toes, and pushes zir sunglasses back onto zir face.

There’s another car parked outside the gas station, a big white van spraypainted in blues and greens.

Huh. Kobra takes a closer look at the graffiti, and it’s cool as fuck, even if it is a lot messier than Party’s is. Still, it’s bursting with ideas, a winged sheep dropping tiny bears and people in bear costumes on a grid marked “BATTERY CITY,” airplanes crashing into the moon and twisted trees growing out of a skull painted with the old fashioned american flag. Way up above all this is the word “YOUNGBLOODS,” the letters all stretched and squished to look like an old skeleton key, next to a keyhole. A long lashed yellow pupiled eye peers out from roughly inside the keyhole. It’s cool as fuck and Kobra wishes the rest of the gang could see it.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” A short kid with a black bandanna around his neck, skin so white it practically glows in the harsh noon sun, and a hat pulled low over their eyes calls out. They’re walking fast with clenched fists. They’re sturdy but Kobra’s got at least a foot on them, and they look about twelve anyways, with freckles on their arms and red hair sticking out haphazardly underneath the hat.

“Sorry,” Kobra says, and takes a step away from the van. “I was just looking at all your ‘paint. It’s fuckin’ awesome.”

“Oh. Sorry!” the kid says. Their voice is a lot deeper than Kobra initially thought. Zie revises zir judgment from “twelve” to “maybe seventeen?” “I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything.” All the mad’s gone out of them and they look almost shy. Kobra think the hat might be just as much to hide behind as to protect from the sun.

“Yeah, it’s fine. Douchebags mess with shit.” Kobra shrugs. “My older brother’s an artist. He would eat this up.”

The kid’s smiling a little. “That’s cool. I mean, we’re not—I guess we’re more musicians than painters.”

“Cool. The Youngbloods?”

“Yeah,” they nod, and their smile is proud now. Zie recognizes the look from Fun Ghoul’s face when he talks about the Killjoys. Lucky. Grateful.

“Hey, Trick, what’s up?” Someone calls.

“Eh, it’s fine,” the kid, Trick, calls about, and then someone rounds the corner. Short-cropped bleach-blond hair, about the same height as Trick but definitely older, black banana and jacket painted with the same old-fashioned American flag spraypainted on the van. They’re squinted into the sun, and Kobra thinks, in the back of zir mind, I know the crinkles around those eyes.

“Trick, you forgot your jacket and you’ll literally burn in five minutes. Here, I brought it. Wanna put it on?” Trick takes the jacket with a sheepish smile, shrugs it on. It’s black, with a bear and a human wearing a bear suit on the back. There must be something spraypainted on the van for each member of the crew, just like how their Trans-Am is.

The way that the someone smiles at Trick reminds Kobra of something. A dark night, flashing lights, loud music.

“Huh,” Kobra says, and then before zie can think straight, “you’re not dead.”

“Should I be?” The someone says. The smile is dropping off their face. Trick’s guard is back up, his hands back into fists.

“No! No, at least I hoped not. I just. The night with the dracs, in the safe club…” Zir voice trails off. “Like, I guess I just saw a lot of dead people that night.”

The someone’s mouth is in a small “o” and they look like they’re remembering things.

“I saw you…I saw you get out, with a couple of guys. And you had a kid with you.”

“That’s my brother…s.” Kobra thinks, yes, that was the right word, once zie gets it hissed out. “And The Girl. You made it, though!”

“Eh, all in a day’s work!” The someone shrugs, grins, and yeah, Kobra definitely remembers that grin. And maybe it was all in a day’s work, but Kobra had a lot of dreams about kissing a bright-eyed stranger with blood on their teeth.

“Your hair looks different.”

“So does yours,” the someone shoots back, grinning.

Kobra cocks zir head to the side. “True.”

“Call me Bats,” the someone says, sticking out their hand to shake.

Kobra took it (string calluses on the fingertips and scars on the palms) and said, “Kobra Kid. I use zie and zir.”

“He, and he,” Bats says, pointing to himself and to Trick.

“Cool,” Kobra nods. “Youngbloods. I’m a Killjoy.”

“Yeah! You guys blew up—wait, are you okay with guy and dude and stuff?”

“Yes. Guy, dude, brother. That all works. I’m not a boy, but…yeah. Just don’t call me a girl.”

“Cool. You can be my bro then.”

“Sweet little dudes.” Kobra says, and Bats’ grin is infectious.

“Sweet little dudes! Fuck yeah! Our own gang of two!”

Trick rolls his eyes.

“Me and Trick are also a member of a two person gang. We’re called Release the Bats.”

“No, we aren’t, Bats.”

“Oh yeah. I forgot. We’re the one person. Cut in half. We’d be one whole tall person, right?”

Trick rolls his eyes again, but he’s smiling. “I’m going back inside. It’s too damn hot out here.”

“Be careful lest you trip and dash your foot against a rock!” Bats calls after him. Trick turns around and mimes hanging himself.

“Love you too!”

Kobra’s not really sure where the conversation should go from there. Bats’s got a lot of words but zie kinda wants to get back in the Trans-Am and drive back to Show Pony’s.

“Hey. Um. “ His eyes are bright when he focuses them on zir, and he catches zir forehead while looking and trying for eye contact. “Do you wanna come in? And hang out, or something?”

Kobra feels slightly annoyed, if zie’s entirely honest. Zie’s been so used to being around zir gang (or dracs with masks) that zie forgets how awful it is when people try to catch your eyes on theirs. It’s like holding a worm. And now they’re playing eyetag, Kobra desperately roaming around Bats’ features while Bats tries to get zir gaze. Finally Kobra settles with looking at the ground.

“I don’t really do, um. Looking you in the eye. So if you could not?” The words get stuck in zir throat, but while zie’s looking at zie boots in the dust it’s a little easier. Ghoul’s bike-chain bracelet is in zir jacket pocket, and zie twists it around zir fingers. Zir heartbeat is rising. Shitshitshit. Keep it down.

“Oh, dude. I’m. Oh god.” Kobra can feel his fingers ghosting across zir wrist before pulling back. “Do you do touching? Is that okay? Do you want me to—“

Kobra holds up a hand and Bats falls silent so quickly it’s almost comical. Zie can breathe again. When zie looks back up at Bats’ face, he doesn’t chase zir eyes into his anymore.

“Um. I. Kinda didn’t tell anyone where I was going, so I have to go before they flip out that I’ve been lit up and left out here. So. Um. Yeah? I should go. I kinda have to go. You’re super cool—like, your paintings are super cool, on your van, and um. Yes. Bye?”

Kobra scurries into the car and gets zir foot in the gas as soon as possible, forgetting to put the key in the ignition.

“Shit!” Zie mutters. Bats is waving as zie pulls out.

It’s not until halfway back to Show Pony’s with the highway stretching out straight and long, that Kobra realizes zie has no way to get ahold of Bats again. But that’s how it is in the desert. No addresses and no phone numbers, of course. But still, Kobra liked talking to him.

~

“Release the Bats? Oh my god, you talked to Bats and Trick and you didn’t even get your chest signed?” Ghoul moans, hands over his eyes, about to roll off the bed.

“It’s not my fault I’m not up on every pair of kids who picks up a guitar in the zones!” Kobra mirrors him but is careful not to fall off the bed.

“Release the Bats is a four person band who’ve been playing for like two years! They’re like the hottest hop-pop punk band in the Zones!”

“I’m not up on hop-pop punk!”

“That’s because you’re too busy jerking it to songs that were probably made by robots!”

“How many times do I have to tell you that Morrissey is not a fuckin’ robot?”

“He’s like a droid of sadness. A sadroid. You’re obsessed with a sadriod!”

“So’s Party!”

“I know!” Ghoul finally leans a little too far over the edge of the bed and lands on the ground with a tiny “ooff,” pulling most of the blankets with him.

Kobra hangs over the edge to look at him. Zie can’t help grinning. “What kind of robot is Jarvis Cocker?”

“Already had this argument with Party. Porndroid for sure.”

“Robert Smith?”

“ _Robot_ Smith. Stop asking me about dead Britlish people.”

“It’s Brit-pop.”

“They’re Britlish.”

“I don’t think that’s right.”

“I don’t even think Britain is real.”

“Fuck you.”

“You, too.” Ghoul bounces up again, with slight difficulty because of his wool-tangled arms. “I still can’t believe you made out with Bats of Release the Bats. I can’t believe anything about this.”

“No, you can’t kiss me. I’ve washed my face since then, and Party would kill you.”

“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you think I would stoop so low.”

“Earlier you implied that you wanted me to bribe songs out of band members with sexual favors. Forgive me for pulling guns on rocks.”

“Pffft.” Ghoul blows his bangs out of his eyes and grins.

“Besides, I kinda. Ran off? So I probably won’t see him again. At least not a while. And if I do I think I’m gonna turn into a, giant embarrassment dustheap or something.”

“Giant embarrassment dustheap.”

“Yeah.”

“Naw.” Ghoul says, thrashing about and gaining his feet. “You’re cute when you blush.”

Kobra gives him both middle fingers, and he just sticks his tongue out, wraps a blanket around his shoulders, and pads out in search of Party. Probably to spill all of Kobra’s STATE SECRETS and embarrass zir more.

Zir face is hot and flames up against the cool pillow. But all the same, zir heart is flipping. The Girl is making car engine noises in the other room, “bang bang bang, eat light!”

Kobra thinks of the way Bats grinned at zir and grins back at the dark ceiling.

~

They pull out of Show Pony’s at dawn two days later. Show Pony tucks their helmet under their arms and blows kisses, Doctor D leaning against the doorframe and waving. The Girl hides their eyes behind their curls, their tiny barely-showing jaw set. Jet had spun them around in his big arms, Ghoul had hugged them so fiercely with his eyes squeezed shut, and Party had pushed aside their hair to kiss them on the forehead.

Kobra hadn’t known how to say goodbye to them, so theirs but at the same time, so not. Going away to war. Zie had slid them zir best pair of sunglasses, dark and  black-rimmed and face-eating, and held them on zir hip. Kobra’s hips were wide enough to carry them, even if they’d grown heavier and taller.

Zie didn’t know what to say. But zie hoped they understood, even if it was only in the back of their brain.

Zie felt like zie was just a kid themselves. The Girl would be better off with Doctor D, with good food and other kids to play with. But it still hurt.

“Until I come back, kid,” zie whispered. “You have to watch my shades. Sound like a deal?”

“Yeah,” they said against Kobra’s neck.

Jet drives, Party shotgun and Ghoul and Kobra in the backseat. The three of them without their hands on the wheel turn around to look back until Doctor D’s is a dot at the end of the highway. Jet looks in the mirror way more often than he needs to.

They blast past the gas station with The Smiths playing softly. The Youngblood’s van is long gone. Party’s letting his head rattle on the window, mouth drawn.

“Okay, we’re killjoys. Time to take the blacktop, right?” Ghoul says. “We need something fast. Something fun. Hit it, Party!”

“Hit what?” Party says, bolting upright.

“Hit the number one way to get you up outta the doldrums? The numero uno way to make you run like you just got your oil changed?” Ghoul has himself draped over the back of Party’s seat, smirking in Party’s general ear and neck and sideburn region. It’s sickening.

Party wiggles a little in his seat, a pleased grin on his face. Kobra rolls zir eyes. Zie knows what’s next.

“Don’t—watch your—“ Jet starts, but it’s too late. Ghoul has already smacked his head on the rearview mirror in his attempt to turn on the radio.

“Did it!” He crows, plopping back into his seat while Party fiddles with the tuner.

A solid wave of synths hits Kobra full blast once the static sorts itself out.

“Ke$ha!” Party crows, shimmying his shoulders.

“Fuckin’ rad!” Ghoul yells out the window.

The heaviness on Kobra’s shoulders melts away as they dance in their seats and sing out the window, headbanging and hollering and laughing when Kobra bounces too high and hits zir head against the Trans-Am roof.

They make it silly-sleazy, Party singing the whole thing and Ghoul just yelling out the chorus and Kobra air-guitaring.

“Wham! Bam! Thank you, ma’am! Get inside my fuckin’ gold Trans-Am!” He wiggles his eyebrows to punctuate.

The song ends, and Neon Mouth’s smooth quick voice starts up over the static. Cobra Starship is a station for “diva pop, partyhard sounds, and the latin ballads I cried to as a child,” and Neon Mouth delivers on both.

“And now a song request. I don’t usually take these cuz all of you have sticks up your asses and awful music taste, but when the requester is unfortunately sitting my studio kicking his boots back on my turntable and threatening my vinyls, I’m left with little choice. This one’s a little different from the usual, divas from a time unknown. But divas as usual, friends. This goes out to Kobra Kid of the Fabulous Killjoys, from Bats, loverboy extraordinaire and the worst friend ever—ow! Fuck you!”

And then another voice is over the mic, “Kobrakid, this is my third time requesting, and like they say, third times the charm, right?”

The drumbeat starts up, and Kobra knows zie’s blushing the color of zir jacket. The car collectively explodes.

“Oh my god—“

”Holy fuckin’—“

“Our Kobra’s got zirself a dude!”

“That’s so romantic,” Party says, with the weird swooning look he gives Ghoul sometimes, and Ghoul is giving him the weird swoony look back.

“It’s not like that! He’s just. Nice and cool.”

“And a good kisser,” Ghoul says, sitting back with a smug little smile.

“I regret ever telling you anything.”

“Never tell anybody anything,” Ghoul and Party both chorus at the same time.

“Like a good friend that’s a good kisser, okay? Now shh, I’ve gotta listen to my song,” Kobra says.

“Keeps me sighin’, baby for you,” sing the Wonderful Supremes, high and clear. “So won’t you hurry, come on, boy, see about me.”

Kobra smiles, leans zir hot cheek against the cool metal of the Trans-Am’s frame. Zie’s got a family that sings out car windows with zir, a home to go back to filled with family once removed, and new friends who like zir enough to pester DJs into dedicating songs to zir. It’s hard to make friends in the Zones. Kobra hadn’t kept up with any of them, really, who they’d known when they were pillanimals, or who’d hung around the gas station, or who would come by the guardhouse.

Kobra doesn’t resent it. It’s hard, in the zones. But someone putting in the effort.

Well. It’s cool.

Zie sticks zir hand out the window, letting the wind catch in zir palm. The radio’s playing a song with fuzzy bass that grinds against zir ears and a fast rap that Ghoul and Party can’t follow. Jet knocks zir hands against the steering wheel, adding to the beat.

They’re ready to take what comes. Bring it on.

 


End file.
